


Unintentional Catharsis

by Subjuggul8ion



Series: Guro 33 [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Self-Harm, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-06
Updated: 2013-09-06
Packaged: 2017-12-25 19:27:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/956784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Subjuggul8ion/pseuds/Subjuggul8ion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s not human. Won’t be human, will never be human, fundamentally is not human, in no small part because he doesn’t want to be, not really.</p>
<p>Do mind the tags.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unintentional Catharsis

**Author's Note:**

> The first in a series of guro challenge prompts, originally posted to Tumblr.

He’s not human. Won’t be human, will never be human, fundamentally is not human, in no small part because he _doesn’t want to be_ , not really. Not when it means what it means and that means being weak and useless (what did they ever do for him, after all?) and having that horribly short (short, but bright burning, passionate, living and loving and dying just like that in a blink of an eye) lifespan (which should mean nothing to a ghost, not really, human ghosts lived for eons, too, here) and the tainted, mutated blood running through veins so easily torn open to spill their contents onto the all too eager ground.

Not that he knew that, of course, not really. Just what the human movies with the deceptively short titles told him, and really, that was more than enough to put on a façade, to keep up an image.

To maybe get some attention for once.

Posturing and acting and claiming he was born to the wrong planet, the wrong species, even the wrong era didn’t seem to be working, didn’t earn him anything more than a passing scoff and pseudo-supportive lectures from Kankri. Any attention is good attention, but that could get old faster than he could finish a lecture, and he didn’t especially want to sit through another anytime soon.

The next step was drastic, he knew, but logical. Of course it was. It was their fault, anyway, not his. He was perfectly capable of coping with rejection after rejection, with being shunned and shoved away like a perfectly reasonable troll, but they didn’t need to know that. All that mattered was that they felt sorry for him, that they worried about him, that they gave him more than a passing, disgusted glance.

The pretense, the façade, the act gave him the perfect excuse, too.

Claws (pristine, sharp, not yet trimmed, through providence or vanity he couldn’t tell) took to his neck and it was then that he felt his hands shaking as he resisted the thought, the urge to just do it, to dig them into his gills, to scratch and scrape and claim dysmorphia. Humans didn’t have them, after all.

A moment to steel his resolve and that’s it, he digs in and immediately, purely on reaction, his body pulls back from the pain, spasms away from the hands causing it, rips, tears, lets violet run quick and cold down his neck to stain his shirt.

And it isn’t as bad as he thought it would be.

Emotions he didn’t know he’d been bottling up bubbled to the surface with the blood he quickly found himself choking on, spitting out as he laughed, sardonic and bitter, and he cried, tears coming unbidden to leave tracks down his face.

The pain stopped being a sensation, then, and started being a means, an outlet.

Before he knew just what was happening, he found himself down on his knees on the floor, found his claws deep in his arms where the blood ran thicker and didn’t clot quite so quickly, digging, scratching, scraping away as it dripped and ran freely over his hands, over unmarred skin, soaked into his shirt and his jeans and dripping to the floor of his dreambubble-fabricated hive.

The tears stopped as quickly as they’d come, dried on his face and where they fell and made his skin feel strange when he moved to spit out blood still being taken in by his mangled gills. He didn’t know when he stopped crying, didn’t know when he stopped trying to rip all the violet from his veins in a fit of self-loathing as his pan churned away in his head, took control of his hands to force himself into taking an outlet for his frustrations after so long refusing himself a well-needed scream or choked sob, neither of which came now, neither of which were necessary.

Not when his fingers were left twitching from the fit, from what would probably turn out to be nerve damage. Not when his hands were so slick and sticky and so tainted he would later not believe he could have traded the purple for the grey ever again. Not when his gashes are left throbbing and oozing, a stark reminder of what it felt like to really, actually _feel_ for the first time in a very long time.

Not when his emotions were back in check, when the familiar numbness crawled over his pan and settled in to stay for a good long while longer.

Not when he had to pry himself off the floor to clean up and put his mask back on, not when he had to saunter out and cultivate the pity this little stunt had originally been out to garner.

He just had to make himself move, first.


End file.
